More Heat than Light
by LethalTempest
Summary: Anna Deine is a sixteen-year old girl living in a crappy row house in Chicago with her older sister. She is excitable, bright, and able to create and control fire at will. Wait, what?
1. Sin City

Anna Deine was bored and frustrated, slumped in the narrow gap between her bed and her dresser. The boredom and frustration had cleaved together to form a sort of profound, sad desperation. She folded and unfolded her hands absently. As she did, a gentle flame coated her hands. She manipulated it with skilled fingertips into the soft visage of a sparrow before allowing it to dissipate.

She called it the flicker.

This was primarily for simplicity's sake. She had spent a good half hour at the library, looking up fire-related roots in Greek and Latin, but ultimately decided that her abilities were too interesting to bog down with polysyllabic jargon. "The flicker" was vague enough to sound mysterious, while subtly implicating itself. So, the flicker it was.

Her abilities were difficult to describe. It was like trying to explain what one's own tongue tastes like, or how to sweat. It was something she was simply able to do. She'd just concentrate and flex a muscle she could not place, and bam! Viscous fire would shoot out from her palms.

She was vaguely proud of her own ingenuity. For all she knew, she was the first and only person on the planet able to flicker. The internet was less than helpful, certainly, except for providing fireproof clothing and inconspicuously obtaining a gas mask. Comic books and movies gave her no feasible explanation, unless she had somehow been exposed to an absurd amount of radiation unknowingly.

Somehow, she doubted that.

But she was bored and frustrated. She checked the time on her phone, squinting as if the sudden light hurt her eyes. She sighed. It did not hurt her eyes. Her phone vibrated suddenly, and an alert from the local news station displayed. She was needed. Shit.

Anna braced herself and stood, teetering slightly from the lightheadedness. She recovered quickly though, and, after slipping off her school clothes as gracefully as one can, replacing each article with its fireproof replacement, a shoddy disguise if there ever was one: a black skirt, leggings, a yellow long-sleeved shirt, and an orange short-sleeved shirt with her logo hastily safety pinned to the front. From her bedpost, she grabbed her gas mask and school-issued safety goggles. She was ready.

Atta Girl, atcha service!

There were ants the size of school buses attacking Chicago.

It was the third direct attack on the city in two months, much to the terror of its citizens. As frightening as the ants themselves were, they couldn't hold a candle, so to speak, to the person who fought them off: a girl in her mid-teens who tossed around fire and flitted about through the air like a spark.

It freaked everyone the hell out, Anna could tell.

On the second attack, the Avengers were called to assemble, only to find that everything was over and done by the time they arrived. It was a little embarrassing for everyone, that day.

But this time, the Avengers hadn't even bothered, despite the fact that this was the most challenging fight thus far. Atta Girl fought long and hard,slicing open the thoraxes of ants with precise blue flames, running atop an enormous wave of red flame. It took an hour and a half, two hours tops to get it all over and done with. She had helpfully set the ants' carcasses on fire to save the highway department the trouble of figuring out how the hell to dispose of a school bus sized exoskeleton. The whole experience was an adrenaline high the likes of which could not be described.

She was glad when it was over, though. These fights always took a lot out of her. She mustered up the last of her strength to draw her sigil andalias with ash on a flat slab of concrete near one of the flaming carcasses. She had made up her mind since the beginning that she would have tomake a name for herself, literally and figuratively, before some dumbass reporter did it for her. They'd probably be calling her "Ashes to Ashes" or"Sparky" or something else stupid. Luckily for her, the entire city of Chicago seemed to have accepted the name she had chosen for herself, and dumbass reporters everywhere could go back to asking the general public if Captain America was gay or if Iron Man was secretly a space lizard, or whatever dumbass reporters do.

After she had finished, she simply left. Her kinds of fights didn't tend to attract crowds, mostly because it could kill them, so she could generally leave the scene of an attack without attracting too much attention to herself. She could always do a smoke ninja thing, but with fire, if peoplewouldn't stop hounding her or trying to take her mask off. This time, she didn't have to. She strolled away, feeling her adrenaline high start to the smoke had dissipated enough for her to see ten feet in front of her, Anna removed her gas mask, goggles, and short-sleeved shirt. Mostpeople were still in their basements or other emergency shelters, but they would be emerging soon.

She arrived home safe, sound, and unnoticed. She was still coated in a thin layer of ash, though. Anna doubted that Liesel would be suspiciouswhen she got home, so there was no need to shower yet. She stashed away the costume, changed into the most comfortable sweat pants she owned, and was about to fall asleep when she felt something on her foot. It was an ant.

She smiled when she saw it, cupped her hands around it, and took it outside.


	2. Not Forever, Just for Now

"Wait. Wait wait wait." Tony put a hand over his mouth and shook the other with each word. "The new Avenger recruit you've been hinting at for weeks now is…?"

"Her name is Anarinda Deine, age sixteen, alias 'Atta Girl'," Coulson continued without even blinking. He made a gesture with his right hand, and the TV turned on.

A gas mask clad figure with long braided hair ran atop an enormous wave of flame, dealing blow after blow to the underbelly of a red ant the size of a school bus. With a final sharp burst of blue from the figure's left hand, the ant's thorax completely collapsed. The footage rapidly cut to that of a bystander's iPhone. He shakily approached the dead ant. On a slab of concrete next to the carcass, "Atta Girl" was written in ash, along with a simple flame symbol.

"Holy shit," Clint breathed.

"You can see how much of an asset she could be to us," Coulson felt a smidge of satisfaction at his team's slack jawed silence. He'd go recruit her as soon as possible for the impending attack Doom was planning, and their team would be that much stronger.

Anna watched as a sleek black car with tinted windows parked on her street, tense, with a vague, heavy pit forming in her stomach. She had been expecting this, had done her homework at the windowsill for the past few weeks in preparation, but that didn't stop the pounding in her ears. A balding man stepped out of the back seat, wearing a suit way too nice for her neighborhood. He eyed her modest row house with an expression Anna couldn't read before approaching the doorbell.

Anna untangled herself frenetically from her fleece blanket, mumbling obscenities. She stumbled toward the front door and reached it in time to take some deep breaths before it actually rang. She waited another ten seconds after that to answer. She wasn't nervous. She _wasn't_.

"H-hello?" she said, cracking the door open.

"Hello, is this the Deine residence?" he was intimidating, amount of hair on his head notwithstanding.

"Yes, sir. How can I, can I help you?" she willed her voice not to shake.

"This is Agent Coulson. I'm from the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division," his expression softened, sensing Anna's anxiety. "I have my ID if you'd like to see that?" Anna nodded mutely, and the man, Agent Coulson it would seem, flipped open his wallet to a legitimate-looking ID card. "I'd like to ask you and your guardian a few questions."

"Yes, sir." Anna opened the door further and motioned for him to enter.

"Do you want to sit down?" she asked, walking slowly to the modest living room.

"That would be lovely."

They sat down across from one another. Agent Coulson looked as though he expected something of her. She eyed him suspiciously. There was a terse, uncomfortable silence for about forty seconds.

"How much do you know about me?" Anna broke the silence, trying not to confess anything inadvertently.

Agent Coulson looked at her fondly. "Enough, Miss Deine."

"I'm, I'm not getting arrested, am I?"

He stared at her for a moment, and her discomfort mounted.

"Was that a stupid question?" she was growing more desperate for answers. "Because I'm not sure if you're trying to tell me 'of course' or 'of course not' and it's starting to freak me out a little bit."

"Miss Deine, you are not being arrested," Agent Coulson patted the air in a placating motion. Anna cocked her head slightly. "You've heard of the Avenger's Initiative, correct?"

Her eyes widened in recognition. "You're, you're here to recruit me?"

Agent Coulson nodded, seemingly grateful that she was starting to catch on.

"You're here to..." she petered off, breathing heavily. "I'm...I'm gonna be..."

"Calm down, Miss Deine," he soothed, leaning forward towards her without crowding her. "It'll be something like a trial run. We'll work with you for a few missions, and decide from there what the best decision is for everyone."

Anna considered this, and her breathing slowed. It wouldn't be such a terrible thing if she got some practice working with a team, building connections. There's a lot of world that needs saving, and teaming up was only practical. She'd just go to New York for a few days, and...

"Wait, are you flying me out to New York?" _Oh, crap, Liesel._ "What about school? What about my sister? She doesn't know about the flicker, I've been waiting to tell her when the time was right and I knew she wouldn't take me out of school or make me stop-"

"We'll come to an arrangement with your school, don't worry about that," Agent Coulson was remarkably calm in the face of a panicking teenager. "And as for your sister, I can have that discussion with her if you'd prefer."

"I doubt she'd take it better from you than from me," Anna pointed out.

"Well, that settles that. Is she here? I'd like to fly you to New York as soon as possible."

"She'll be home from work any time now, I thin-"

Liesel Deine walked in the house wearing a rumpled waitress uniform, then leaned against the front door and sighed. She turned her head toward the living room, and raised an eyebrow at Anna, shooting her a _what the hell did you do._

 _"_ Uh, Liesel?" Anna stood up and walked toward her sister. "Can I talk to you for a quick sec? Alone?"

Liesel took it better than Anna was expecting, given the circumstances. That is, she hyperventilated for a few minutes and needed a few more minutes to herself in the bathroom. She came out collected, but weary, adjusting her glasses.

"I'm sorry for not having introduced myself earlier, Agent," she said. "I'm Liesel Deine, Anna's older sister-slash-guardian."

"A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Deine," Agent Coulson said politely.

"So, I'm sorry, I'm still a little confused about this," Liesel started, "are you taking her to New York? Alone?"

"There will be a government jet arriving at O'Hare in just under an hour, yes."

"Can I see some ID?" she asked. " Do you have paperwork for this? Because I'm a little uncomfortable with a full grown man swooping in and taking my baby sister to New York without a real solid reason."

"Believe me, Ms. Deine, I would much rather we go about this a different way, but there is a potential emergency in New York which requires as much manpower as possible to combat it." He handed her his ID as he explained.

"Like, 2012 Alien Attack-level emergency?"

He nodded.

She handed him back his ID after studying it carefully. She turned to Anna. "Are you...Is this something you want to do? Are you okay with this?" There was something pleading in her voice that Anna recognized, and felt herself melt.

"I'm sure, Liesel."

Liesel smiled sadly, then looked back at Agent Coulson. "If it's what she wants, there's no stopping her." She turned back to her sister. "Let's get you packed, okay? If you'll excuse us, Agent."

He nodded graciously. "Take all the time you need."


End file.
